I’m getting ready to move off of Google (and Private Internet Access), and Proton is looking like the best option. But I’m nervous. Some of the things I worry about:
- Calendar support: I rely really heavily on Google Calendar. How will I share events with others? And what will I do without Google Tasks?
- VPN App Quality: Seeing some mixed reviews on Proton VPN Android app.
- Proton ethics & politics: Look, I really don’t want to open up the holy war here. My big stipulation is: I don’t want my money to go to a company that will donate its money or services to fascists. To my knowledge, Proton does not do that. I know they made a post that seemed to praise GOP antitrust efforts. I do not believe that that is the same thing as lending material support for fascists. (And, as someone who is very well read-in on antitrust issues, I’ll say that – for a lot of complicated reasons – there is some truth to Proton’s post, but I wish they had framed it as a critique of the corporate wing of the Democratic party and not praise of the GOP.)
- Anything else I haven’t thought to ask.
So, folks who have made the switch: What do you wish you had known? What do you wish you had done to make the move easier?
Thank you for your advice.
Switching to Proton from all the other shit accounts was one of the best online services thing I ever did in my life. I got a discount back then and to be honest, I would even pay double the price, if I had to. It’s just worth it.
As to what you need to know… There is not much to know, except, just do it. Do not hang onto the obsolete accounts. Migrate everything to Proton, then keep the old accounts for 6-12 months, just to make absolutely sure, you did not miss some rare account you barely ever use and is still connected to the old e-mail address. Finally, just never log into the old one ever again and stay with Proton. Proton is king.
If I remember correctly, Proton even offers migrations features, which let you migrate from Google to Proton in some mouse clicks.
I use Proton mail for a mailing list that’s hosted and managed by a local linux users group. The messages from the mailing list arrive as .eml files, with each message as an attachment. the native web browser cannot read the attachments. I have to download each message, either individually or all of them as a single zipped file. It might be the fault of the admin of the mailing list and not Proton’s fault. I’m not sure. It’s not very active so I never bothered to look into the issue. it’s a hassle but not a problem. I thought .eml was a standard email format so it seemed odd that the web client could not read it.
i also occasionally use proton drive to back up my plaintext journal every 3-6 months. i backup to mega as well. proton drive has 2 gb of storage on the free plan. mega has 20gb. my journal is 6.9 MiB across 166 files. i have plenty of storage for my use case. i do not store anything sensitive. so that’s not a concern.
I use posteo.de/en for email and we use the calender as a shared family calender with my wife.
Works fine for me, but we don’t really use the calender to share events with others, so I am not sure how well that works.
I wish I had know both how painless it was AND how happy (even proud) I’d be about it!
Honestly the 1 thing that matters is : having your data backed-up. Everything else is secondary. Sure, you will have some UX hiccups, the UI will be new, some tools won’t behave exactly like you are used to, so what? Live and learn the same way you did with Google products. We have been absolutely brainwashed (and I do mean “we”, I don’t mean “you”) to believe that whenever there is a big bright BigTech logo, it’s safe and easy. It’s not! We are just used to it and when we genuinely think back, we did learn where everything is. When things change we assume we’re at fault.
Anyway… if you are genuinely nervous, just try for a month and rollback or, IMHO better, switch to another provider. I’ve been a paying Proton customer for years (all services) and I like it but it’s not perfect either. If Proton goes to shit, I’ll switch.
I went from Google to Proton and then switched out for another provider. No offline mode/IMAP support allowing me to use an email client on my phone was bothersome as I need to monitor multiple inboxes. Email was fine but sluggish (in part due to decryption so partially understandable I guess). Still use the VPN which I think is their most mature product. Drive is basic but I didn’t need much more.
I was willing to put up with the annoyances when I really believed in what they were doing. But after the GOP comments, the crypto/AI stuff, and leaving Mastodon it just all became a bit much. I like that they are nonprofit, FOSS, and independently audited of course, but their messaging/priorities have been mixed to say the least. Wouldn’t blame someone for staying, wouldn’t blame them for leaving at this point.
Yeah. Tried ProtonVPN before it was blocked, and hoped I’d also have another email address. But no, being unable to use it in my email client with all the other accounts made it unusable for me.
What do you mean by saying that ProtonVPN was blocked?
Blocked by the government I mean. Inaccessible. Somene I know tried Stealth and it doesn’t seem to work either, at least on the free tier.
which government? is it not usable anymore?
Went from Google to Proton and have since moved on from Proton. If there’s one thing I wish I would’ve thought of before switching it would’ve been not using a single provider for everything.
At the end of the day it got me off Google, but with more or less the same situation I started with. Everything I was using was housed by one company. If they go under or turn evil you’re scrambling to replace all your online services at once all over again. That isn’t something I’m comfortable with so I split my service selection up and moved to multiple companies for the services I actually use.
Having everything in one place is super convenient until something happens that makes you want or need to move again. I’m happier now and ended up paying a bit less overall which is cool.
Who are you with now?
I don’t know if that makes much sense. If you lose, for example, assuming you spread it over three providers, 1/3 of your accounts, wouldn’t this already be bad enough? I think, the overhead of using so many different services simultaneously is way bigger and more real, than something bad happening to the single service I settled with. Am also with Proton for many many years (back then, it was only “ProtonMail”…) and nothing bad happened. It only got better & better over the years. It’s amazing.
This is good advice. Don’t use a single provider for everything. I use Tuta for mail, bitwarden for pw management, selfhosted WebDAV for calendar + contacts, and nextcloud for the rest for exactly this reason. It’s much easier to migrate one service at a time than everything at once.
You can just pay for and use single services with proton though so I don’t see this as an „I wish I knew this about Proton before“
Proton works fine for me. Email client works as you’d expect in iOS and the webmail is the same as any other. I don’t use the calendar though so can’t comment there. I DO use the vpn heavily. I don’t understand the issues people have with it because it’s always been good for me. I use it on my phone and multiple computers - even Linux (the unofficial flatpak also works well).
The thing I wish I realized earlier (keep in mind that I started using it like 10 years ago) is that it’s impossible to degoogle your life. Yay I use proton - but everyone else still uses Gmail so google gets it all anyway. Not everything, but you get the idea.
Tbh i just don’t send email. All i use it for is accounts that don’t let you use a username, receiving shipping information, and sales ads for things I’m actually interested in.
Only time I might actually need to send and reapond to emails is if I’m job hunting.
Wow really? I’m fascinated :)
Generational thing maybe? I still communicate with doctors, family members, and like support for orders/inquiries via email. Not all the time, a lot with text too. But it’s still like 50/50 email / text.
Texting and chats are my preferred form of contact i guess; haven’t really been to a doctor in stares into the distance
Aaaanyway, yeah i suppose I do use it for support. I use my work email plenty, its just for personal email i dont really “use” like that.
Id say I’m amongst the oldest gen-Z or youngest millennials?
The one thibg I’d wish I’d known when moving from google that self-hosting is bliss. For everything else there is tuta and nextcloud.
On desktop skip the ProtonVPN app and just use the official WireGuard app with the ProtonVPN config files which you can easily download from proton’s website. If you’re on Linux with gnome you don’t even need the wireguard app. You can just use the GUI network manager app to connect with the config files.
Edit: stupid autocorrect
Especially skip the ProtonVPN app if you’re on Linux.
To steal a line from LGR’s video on Redguard, it’s just so B A L L S.
For me it is nothing. I don’t use the VPN and I own my domain, so I keep that if I ever change providers. The calendar works fine.
Ethically I have accepted that a comment was made by someone that should not have been shared, but I also accept that there is not a single company in the world where there are zero people with whom I agree 100%. The only difference is they don’t tweet about it. I am only fooling myself if I think changing providers will make any difference. Maybe the CEO of the next provider is a racist wifebeater…
Their service has been excellent, it’s European which I aim to support and their security is heavily scriutinzed as it’s open source. I sleep well giving them money for an great service.
it’s European which I aim to support
Indeed, to be clear it’s in Europe but not in a EU country “Proton services are operated by Proton AG, a Swiss corporation whose primary shareholder is the non-profit Proton Foundation based in Geneva, Switzerland.” but they are still GDPR (data protection law from the EU) compliant, cf https://proton.me/support/is-proton-mail-gdpr-compliant
- The Android widget (not app just the widget) does not have a monthly view.
- There is no office suite (I don’t know why this surprised me but it did).
Generally it’s been an overall positive experience.
For me its not realizing that my email aliases will stop working if I stop paying. Wish I would have just went with simplelogin
It kind of makes sense that a paid service stops working when you stop paying though…
Existing aliases continue to work on Simplelogin. And I wish I would have known that beforehand.
Just pay for SimpleLogin no? Proton owns SimpleLogin now.
I purchased SimpleLogin before Proton purchased them. I have my own domain configured with all my aliases which all point to a proton email address which I do not give to anyone.
I purposely created my own domain just so I could be flexible in the future and move to another provider if needed.
To add on, if you have Proton Unlimited, then SimpleLogin is free
If you can only get Service B by paying for Service A, then Service B isn’t really free; it’s just added value.
A nitpick, yes, but I feel it’s an important one.
Duckduckgo has 1 alias for each device
I only ever used Proton for a few secondary email accounts (compartmentalizing between personal and online) and I started transitioning shortly before they got in the news for statements.
My main problem was that I realized that I couldn’t use email forwarding (or at least without paying for a plan, I forget), and I couldn’t manually handle it with a third-party client without paying for their bridge, so unless I wanted to have to open and log in to an old email address for the rest of my life, I basically had to pay to deprecate an email address or move to another provider without risking any future emails to the protonmail address being lost, and I wasn’t in a position where paying was an option for those addresses. Now I only register single-use throwaways on Protonmail (despite their efforts to detect and stop it).
Now I only register single-use throwaways on Protonmail (despite their efforts to detect and stop it).
That kinda sux. There are plenty of other, more suitable, services for that. I would recommend not wasting this great service for such purposes.
I’m in the process of switching to Proton too. I just opened the account; haven’t taken additional steps of switching login emails associated with all of my other accounts, yet. I’ll probably start with giving the new account to local grassroots organizations, first.
I’d like to learn more about what people have to say too!
You can always manually share .ics files in emails to share calendar events. I’ve never used Proton, but I’d be shocked if their calendar can’t ics export. I think that’s literally how Outlook actually implements that, so it should “just work.”
